Here’s one for the doomsayers out there – now that you’ve got your generator up and running it’s time to start stocking up on water, there are tough times ahead.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane spoke in KwaZulu-Natal yesterday and, along with mentioning that SA is the 30th driest country in the world, warned that we have an impending water crisis that we should all be very concerned about. TimesLive reports:

“The burden of low rainfall is being exacerbated by poor maintenance‚ ageing infrastructure and an intermittent energy supply‚” he stated‚ adding that South Africa had a constitution that guaranteed the right to water in the Bill of Rights but this right was being denied to millions of the country’s residents…

“We cannot afford national water load-shedding on top of electricity load-shedding. We need to take urgent action to prevent this looming disaster‚” he warned.

“On average we lose 37% of revenue from water due to physical leakage‚ commercial losses and any unbilled consumption. In many irrigation and municipal water supply schemes this figure can reach as high as 60%‚” he added.

Maimane then spoke about how the water shortage has disastrous consequences for the agricultural sector, with the closing of farms (particularly in the KZN) causing unemployment rates to further increase.

You can’t really blame anyone for a shortage of rain, Mmusi, but that bit about ageing infrastructure and poor maintenance might be a jab at a certain opposition party.

[source:timeslive]